Today’s question about the Broncos comes from Travis Tripp in Fort Collins:

Q: Why don’t the Broncos just cut Ty Warren? He seems to just be dead weight after all his injuries, and I can’t understand why they are still willing to pay him money.

A: Travis, the league has specific rules regarding how the contracts of injured players are handled.

Warren is also a vested player, meaning he has at least four accrued seasons in the league. So the moment he was on the team’s roster for the season opener, his base salary was guaranteed. Whether he was injured or not in the game, his salary, like all of the team’s vested players who were on the roster for the game, was already committed to him.

The Broncos did release backup quarterback Caleb Hanie, who is in his fifth season, Saturday and re-signed him earlier this week to avoid guaranteeing his base salary when it was unlikely he was going to appear in the opener. And it’s a move teams use each season with vested players who are down the depth chart at a position.

Warren was moved to injured reserve Monday, and players on injured reserve also count against the salary cap.

Often, when a team’s salary-cap room is discussed during free agency, folks do forget at times that teams have to leave room for the prospect they will have several players on injured reserve.

Also, injured players cannot be released by teams without some kind of financial settlement. And usually, injury settlements are done with younger players who were question marks to make the roster.

And injury settlements are a product of negotiations with the player getting one medical opinion about the prospective recovery time (five weeks, eight weeks, nine weeks, etc. ) and the team’s medical staff offering its own recovery time. Often the two sides will split the difference, and the player receives a given number of weeks’ worth of pay (his base salary divided by 17 weeks constitutes a week’s pay).

Sometimes the injury settlements come quickly and sometimes it takes a little more time to hammer out a deal.

In the end, Warren will earn about $5.5 million for his two seasons with the Broncos, having played in one game. He was the biggest risk in free agency the Broncos have taken since John Elway was hired to oversee the team’s football operations.

The Broncos signed Warren to two-year deal in 2011 despite the fact he had not played in the 2010 season with a hip injury. He made $4 million last season — $1.5 million in base salary to go with a $2.5 million signing bonus — on injured reserve with a triceps injury. During the offseason, the Broncos asked him to take a significant pay cut for this season.

Warren was scheduled to earn $4 million this season, and initially he and his representatives balked at the idea of a pay cut. He didn’t participate in most of the team’s offseason program.

Eventually the two sides worked out a deal for a $1.25 million base salary to go with a $250,000 bonus. That’s what Warren will be paid on injured reserve in this last year of his contract with the Broncos.

He will be an unrestricted free agent at season’s end, having played only a handful of plays for Denver. Broncos coach John Fox said Warren was in for five plays before his injury last Sunday night.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Tyreek Hill didn’t know what to do when he started hearing thousands of people in Arrowhead Stadium chanting his name, even as he stood all alone on the frozen turf waiting for the punt.